


Full Circle

by Arioch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Non-Chronological, Oxenfree AU, Reaper76 Reverse Big Bang 2017, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 08:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12813474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arioch/pseuds/Arioch
Summary: A routine check of a dormant omnium goes off the rails. An almost supernatural force hounds the small team. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack keeps seeing himself, older, and Lena Oxton as she flickers through time.This isn't the first time for Jack. He doesn't know it.(A slice of an Oxenfree AU, told in a non-linear fashion)





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to my wonderful partner [Oblivion Scribe](oblivionscribe.tumblr.com) who did [this phenomal piece of art](http://oblivionscribe.tumblr.com/post/167876700967/im-so-excited-to-finally-post-my-piece-for-the) I got to spin a story around. Go check them out and give them a follow.
> 
> For more info on the warnings, see the slightly spoilery end notes. There are also spoilers for the basic premises in Oxenfree, so if you want to start a playthrough on a clean slate, do that first. There are, however, because this fic veers of the path, no ending spoilers for Oxenfree.
> 
> Concrit is welcome.

One moment Jack was walking at the helm through the old Detroit Omnium, the next him and Ana were reversed, flipped, turned inside out. He had long given up trying to explain anything; words were just ballast without meaning here. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if time flowed in a unified direction, never mind the right one.

These were the last things he remembered. He began levitating away or towards the ground – it depended on who you asked – as if a gigantic cat picked him up by his scruff. He blacked out.

After who knew how long, he came back in control of his body and started vomiting bile to the side. “Drink.” a voice commanded. Jack turned and let Ana pour some water down his throat. Thankfully, the world was back on its feet, which his head appreciated.

“What do you remember?” Ana asked. Her eyes were luminous with the shine of the thousands of diodes around them.

Jack dug through the head pain for an answer. There wasn’t much that remained. “We were talking about the God A.I. that used to control this place. Daedalos. I started feeling woozy and then reality skipped a beat.”

Ana hums. “That sounds like my version before you got body snatched again.”

“Fuck.” Jack rubbed the back of his head, to no avail. Not that it had ever helped with his normal migraines, never mind possession by omnic induced ones. “Any useful information?”

Ana leaned back against a rusty pipe full of cables. “You mostly flipped upside-down and did your best Carrie impression. Our ‘friend’ didn’t feel like talking much this time. Maybe it’s getting tired of cryptic quizzes, but all I got was vague threats and then a monologue about our time being sealed.”

In that light, the flashes of being tossed around like a ragdoll and dripping blood from his mouth like a waterfall seemed to be consistent with Ana’s retelling. Not that Jack trusts memories anymore. “Ana Amari, notorious Blackwatch commander, and you didn’t merit more than a bad James Bond villain speech. That has to be a first.” Jack straightened up, expecting another intense flash of pain but none came. It seemed like he was finally back to being as steady as he could be on his feet. Time to move on.

Ana shouldered her rifle and moved behind him. “I’m going to make Fareeha a T-Shirt just to commemorate the occasion. ‘My mom got trapped in an omnium with a supernatural, homicidal AI and all she got was a lousy villain speech.’ She’s going to love it.”

“Not on your life.” Jack snorted and went onwards into the dark.

+++

Jack had been there when they first recovered Shimada’s body, sliced in half and burnt almost everywhere. The UN committee overseeing Overwatch had demanded trial on behalf of Japan that they turned over all information they had gathered and Shimada so he could stand. That he was dying only mattered so far as dead people couldn’t be milked for publicity in the criminal court.

Instead of following orders, Overwatch had offered the opportunity for groundbreaking reconstructive surgery to Dr. Angela Ziegler. Shimada was a quite the bargaining chip, but in the end, nothing compared to the continued support Dr. Ziegler was happy to lend worldwide. Nobody had ever given her this kind of experiment to play with. It was easy for her to overlook any violation of professional ethics in the name of the greater good, i.e. rescuing a life. That one could save a body but leave a mind in pain was a lesson she would only learn with the years.

When the medical teams had started prepping his body for surgery, Jack had made the time to be the observation room. If Overwatch resorted to blackmail and human experimentation, he would watch. Better to stand witness to their sins than turn a blind eye.

Laying flayed open on the table, Shimada, who needed to be as lucid as possible for the procedure even while his guts were spilling out all over, had turned to look Ziegler in the eye and demanded: “My penis better come out intact on the other side. If I can’t masturbate anymore, our deal is off.”

At the time, Jack had to suppress a snicker. He understood where the bravado was coming from. Crass quips had abounded on injection day in the SEP; it was easier to joke that this round would give them a six pack on their genitals than confront the fact that each round about a third of the class would leave the program, either on a stretcher or in a body bag.

Now, Shimada Genji’s voice only had a hint of tremble in it. “I need you to come get me. It is messing with my prosthetics.” The operative Dr. Ziegler had built on that surgery table oscillated between cold distance and burning fury. At least, that was what Gabriel’s Blackwatch reports indicated.

_Don’t get lost in thoughts._ Jack pressed a comm button on his eyepiece and answered. “Acknowledged. I have Amari with me. We have your location on screen and will come get you. Sit tight.”

“Actually,” the voice chiming in had a familiar drawl to it. Jack bit his lip so he wouldn’t grind his teeth. The comms were sensitive enough to carry the noise he learned from experience. “aren’t you forgetting about someone on this team? Or were you just going to leave me here?”

“Jesse.” Ana answered in his stead. “Are you with Genji? Your signal is not coming through at all. Either you broke your tracker or something is blocking it.” _Or_ , the vicious resentment in Jack’s head whispered, _he deactivated it and is making them run around in circles while Jesse finally slips his leash._

“Oh no, Shimada here abandoned me too, don’t you worry Ana. Not surprised about the tracker, I had to patch my comm through a console to boost it.”

“A console?” Jack furrowed his eyebrows. Omniums were fully automated and controlled by their God AI. There shouldn’t be any control panels or consoles anywhere near their route. “McCree, where _are_ you?”

Despite the lack of video, Jack could almost see McCree sheepishly cringing as Jack hit the nail on the head. “Near the omnium core, I think?” His voice dropped to an outright whisper.

A chill ran up Jack’s spine. The core, like the rest of the omnium, was shut down. It should be empty. When Daedalos had sealed itself in the core after the omnium surrendered, the Strike Team had cut all connections outside. Liao had disassembled the surveillance system and cut the power cables supplying omnic fabrication themselves. “McCree. Are you alone?” After they had sealed their truce with Overwatch, no omnic was allowed to approach the core on the pain of shutdown.

“No.” Jesse swallowed loudly. “I ain’t never seen these models. They are all purple and black. Look like the kooks I was tailing in London.”

_Null Sector_. Jack swore internally as he mentally labeled the whole area hostile territory. In the back of his mind a voice whispered to him. _Lazy, complacent fool. Had the years he had been in command dulled all of his common sense? An omnium could never be neutral territory._

“Copy, McCree. Sit tight, we will get you out of there. Try to keep avoiding detection. Our ETA is…” Jack brought up the map of the omnium with a button press on his eyepiece. They were not far from the core, only half an hour walk at most if they tried to be stealthy. He hadn’t realized they were that close to the core. So far the teleporting around the omnium hallways seemed random, but what if Reaper actually had control about it?

“Stop stop stop. What do you mean, you are going to McCree, commander? I thought we all agreed you would get me right now. Jesse, no offense, I appreciate the trouble you are in, but my largely cyborg body is getting hacked or something. I can barely keep control and I just now realized that I have a wireless connection or something in me that could be hacked by omnics or an AI and no one deigned to inform me. Do you have any idea how much easier my life could have been if I had known I am my own hotspot?” Shimada cut off his ramble and got back on track, finally. “They haven’t noticed you yet, Jesse, I mean Agent McCree. They are searching for the Strike Commander. However, my position is compromised, and I am under attack. In fact, I’m defenseless because I didn’t even know I needed a firewall.“

Jack rubbed his nose bridge and tried to stem the oncoming headache. Even though Blackwatch personnel were more relaxed with the rules of conduct in general, both Jesse and Genji wouldn’t joke in a situation like this.

Some of the more pedantic Overwatch members didn’t believe Blackwatch had any military discipline. They were wrong, of course. Gabriel Reyes wouldn’t have ever allowed his agents to be unprepared in a fight. On the other hand, he had no problem ignoring off duty pranks.  But when they came before Gabriel or headed out on a mission, the façade bled away and Gabriel’s training took over. In the field, every Blackwatch member needed to be reliable.

So, who to get first?  Unless they each went their own way (and wasn’t that a phenomenally bad idea, splitting up their forces in a hostile zone), they would need to abandon one of them to a longer wait. Jack glanced at Ana with as much meaning as possible. Let her choose who to rescue first. She at least had taught Jesse how to snipe and saw them more often than Jack could hope to, given that his schedule was booked to the brink with meetings and promotions. Gabe had asked him to make time, but Jack never managed to. Ana knew better who of the two was more capable.

Ana stared back at him for what felt like a minute before she acquiesced.  “McCree, Shimada. We are getting both of you, you should know that. ‘No soldier left behind’, right?” She mimicked Gabe’s gruff tone so well a shiver crept down Jack’s spine. “Shimada, you are first. McCree, stay low and wait for us.”

“Fine.” McCree gritted through the comm and vanished without another word. It was the closest way to slamming down the receiver on an old fashioned phone he had.

“That boy.” Ana shook her head and turned towards Jack. “And you! You said you were going to try to get on better terms with Jesse. It’s been a year. You know this is what Gabriel would have wanted, Jack. So why are you still…?” She trailed off into a frustrated huff.

Jack knew how she felt _. I should talk to Jesse outside of work._ For Gabe’s funeral he had put on a suit, something which, as he knew from Gabriel’s many rants, only happened once in a blue moon. Jesse had held his Stetson in one hand like a security blanket for the whole mass. Jesse was, in all the ways that mattered, Gabe’s son. How could he have missed it before? But instead of closing the gap between him and Jesse, Jack remained distant and avoided him where he could.

He hated himself, sometimes.

And how to tell Ana, if he couldn’t even make sense of himself why going over to the Blackwatch parts and just talking was impossible to understand.

“Let’s get going.” He said instead and loaded the map on his eye piece. He still had the bad habit of turning his head when he wanted to move anything on the screen. The blue rendering of their position and Genji’s last location took up all digital real estate he had to offer.

The corridor they walked into was damp and dark enough that guns were useless. The antique glare of neon exit lights was the only illumination as both of them were not ready to risk flashlights. Their boots splashed around the water in the shallow pools on the concrete floor.

Out of the corner of his eye Jack caught a flicker of something moving in one puddle. He turned around, carefully scanning the way they had come for enemies. The corridor remained deserted. With a huff, Jack went to check the puddle again, expecting to find a bug slowly dying.

There was no bug. It took him a while to pinpoint what exactly was off about it. From afar, Ana’s order to keep walking glanced off him.

His reflection was normal, but if he closed his left eye and just looked through his eyepiece it became haunting. The man in the eyepiece looked like his father, sporting the same thin silvery hair resisting baldness and carried the same lines on his face. The face, however, was his own and somewhat similar to how he thought he would end up looking. Bisecting the face were two scars straight as a ruler. The eyes of the apparition gave it away: they were flat and devoid of any joy at all. It was the look he saw in his own eyes every morning.

The reflection knelt and lowered their mouth close to the water. Jack replicated the motion without thought and leaned in closer, transfixed by his counterpart. Everything else around him took a step back, as if to give them privacy. In the back of Jack’s head something took note that Ana was calling out to him and pushed it out of his mind.

<<You are already in the loop>> The old Jack said and vanished. His own face stared back.

“Jack!” Ana spat, striding back towards him with purpose. “We can’t afford to lose time, what has gotten into you? Oh n-“

Before Jack could turn around and reassure her that she didn’t need to worry about him, reality skipped and started rewinding. Whatever player reality ran on was not used to being so unceremoniously stopped and only reluctantly obeyed. Jack felt himself going all over, skipping some old disk. His eyepiece only displayed jumbled together information. Cadet Oxton had gone mad like this. How much could even an enhanced soldier withstand this kind of time distortion?

He came to stop just as suddenly at the beginning of the corridor with Ana by his side. She strode forward and only stopped when she noticed that he wasn’t following.

“Jack, we don’t have time to spare. Hurry!” He scrambled to get to her side.

“What just happened to us?” Jack made sure to keep his gaze straight. Whatever he had seen in the puddles was a distraction he couldn’t afford this time.

She tucked a black strand of hair back behind her ear. “We got caught in Jesse’s and Genji’s bickering. I swear these two are less mature than Fareeha.”

Jack kept walking. “Not that. After that when we got thrown back in time.”

 Ana faltered but caught herself. “Jack, what are you talking about? We went into the corridor after that and now we are walking through it.”

Jack gaped. “No, we went in and then suddenly we were back at the beginning. Do you really not remember?”

Ana shook her head. “Jack, are you sure you are alright? I know losing Gabe hit all of us hard, but… Your memory sounds… impossible.”

“I’m not hallucinating, Ana. You were right-“  

Reality skipped with a resounding jerk. They went back to the corridor entrance in the blink. Jack flailed backwards way too late to be useful in a fight with omnics. Damn, he was getting old.

Ana, who had gone forward turned around. “Jack, we don’t have time to spare. Hurry up!”

Fuck.

+++

“Let’s play a game.” The thing inside Shimada said. Shimada’s body was levitating like a limp doll in the hands of a toddler. His head lolled around whenever the body was jerked around. Besides Jack, Ana held still with the natural grace of a sniper and stared down the entity.

When Shimada’s older brother had left him to die, his torso had been bisected. As Dr. Ziegler had nursed him back to health, the extensive injuries to the spinal cord had been a major concern to her. Even now, Shimada had metal plating bracing it along his back. How much violent motion could his spine take?

“You need to answer some simple questions. As long as you get them right, your asset will be unharmed.” On the wall next to Shimada’s possessed body lights blinked on. Jack’s heart beat a tattoo as _the omnium,_ an omnium _, is getting reactivated; they will be back at war and Gabriel needs to know about it_ right now _\--!_ Then, the light pattern sunk in. The shutdown omnium wasn’t only rebooting, the entity was manipulating the electricity flow, somehow, as well. Shimada had mentioned cyberattacks on his body though they didn’t account for the _floating_.

_It is playing with us._ Jack can only stare aghast at the crude drawing of hangman gallows in neon lights.  He and Ana shared a look. They would play along for now to ensure Shimada’s safety. No one left behind.

“First question: When was the operation in which Gabriel Reyes and his team lead to the murder of Daedalos and the omnics under their directive?”

Jack put on the mask of Strike Commander Morrison. If it wanted to goad them, it would have to try harder.

“In February 2051.” Jack answered.

“Very good.” The voice coming from Shimada sounded like a knife grinding on a plate. Not even after the first surgery had Genji made any similar sounds. What was that thing doing to him? “So at least you haven’t forgotten your involvement, Strike Commander. Next one will be more difficult. Who is Reaper?”

Jack frowned. Reaper had come up as a code used by Blackwatch before but whatever the project was, it had only started well after the end of the crisis. He went for a vague truth. “Reaper is a tool.”

 The entity flickered around the room. Reality strained visibly. Another of the damned triangles hung in the air and all the lamps shone blood red.

“That was wrong, Strike Commander.” The voice came from right behind him, but as soon as he whirled around, it was gone again. “You of all people should have learned not to tell lies, Jackie.” Shimada’s body was back where it had been floating before. Ana inhaled sharply and Jack looked him over more closely. Thin lines of blood were running from his ears. The lights behind were still tinted red but now the gallows sported a rope and a head.

“It’s one too many. We didn’t agree to a shorter game of hangman.” Ana glared at the thing, her gaze no different than when she disciplined Overwatch recruits. Perhaps that was the secret to her commanding presence. She never went easy on anybody, no matter which side they were on. Ana Amari didn’t take a side, she took a moral stance.

“You don’t get to have a say in this. You already took and took without any qualms or thought of what you were even doing, Amari. You only get to play this game by our rules. We won’t let you twist them whenever you like.” The entity howled with its knife-on-plate voice. “Last question. Who pulls your strings, Strike Commander?”

“What? I don’t know what you are talking about.” When they had started talking to the thing possessing Genji, it had been perfectly understandable. Now it devolved into a roaring mass of blackness and the lights threw vermillion sparks. It was losing control, though whether it was because of his answer or because Genji was fighting back was up in the air.

The torso and the arms were added to the hangman. Then, the lights went back to normal and the entity let go of Genji. He dropped like a sack of bricks. Jack’s enhanced soldier reflexes kicked in and he sprinted over to catch Shimada safely. He laid him down as soon as he could. Cyborgs were a bit too heavy for his age now.

Ana knelt next to them and started taking Shimada’s vitals. Jack picked up one of the cables on the back of his neck and inserted it with a shaking hand into his communicator. After too many tries, he started the download for his vital data.

Jack glanced over the information as it came in, trying to understand what he could. “No internal damage to organs or the mechanics.”

Shimada came around a few minutes later with a gasp. “Stay down.” Ana cautioned him, and Jack stopped him from further sitting up. Shimada acquiesced reluctantly but let Ana check him over one more time.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Synthetic muscles tensed as Shimada turned to look at Ana. “The Strike-Commander told me to wait for extraction. Ma’am.” He shrugged and got more comfortable on the ground. “I must have blacked out until you found me.”

Ana pursed her lips. “No. Or if you did black out, it was not the only thing that happened to you, Genji.”

+++

Jack noticed the symbols on the wall first this time. They were hidden behind a stack of boxes in one of the few human break rooms. The graffiti behind them suggested an opened eye. To Jack it still looked like an earlier version of the Shambali crest that was meant to represent the Iris. Maybe the cult had been in touch with the omnics in this ominium at some point.

Ana sat down and covered the entrance to the room. Jack was fairly sure they had managed to shake the Null Sector squad a while ago, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. And the sooner he concentrated on his part of the job, the sooner he would be finished and the sooner they could move on. A room with only one exit quickly became a deathtrap.

He focused on the symbol depicted before him. He focused on slowly changing the settings on his eyepiece. He had to do this right.

At first, only range issues and white lines flickered occasionally through the feed of the eyepiece. He started slowly tuning through different frequencies and the interference got worse. The feed was more like an old tape recording and all sorts of green lights streaked across. Jack tried listened for the change of pitch in the white noise until it sank to a deep bass. That was it.

The view through the glass was now somewhat clear and Jack glanced around. In the corner she stood, wearing a pilot’s jacket and aviator glasses propped in her hair.  Lena Oxton, before she had entered Overwatch as a cadet, stood in the corner flickering like a bad holograph.

“My grandmother called places like this thin place, Emily. I think I understand what she meant with that now.” Oxton looked around for something Jack wouldn’t be able to see anyway but still tried to spot. He had failed just like usual.

“Talon found a way to repair the omnium in Detroit. They told me when I was listening to them. Or maybe the purple robots said it? It’s hard to keep information straight. It happened one way and in a different way at the same moment.” Lena stilled for a moment and cocked her head as if she was listening to an answer.

Her head dropped. “I don’t think it’s the God AI though. Or, not all of it. Time and reality are dense and tangled here. I shouldn’t be here.” Oxton faded away. A few seconds later she appeared again at the starting point, caught in the loop of the scene.

Jack clicked off the eyepiece and turned to Ana. “Oxton suggested both Talon and Null Sector as responsible. I think she is switching between parallel universes. In ours, Null Sector attacked here and gained control of the omnium. In another, Talon enacted the plan. There is not much difference otherwise so I think we split universes very cleanly.” Ana nodded. “How they acted on their plans is almost identical. It has to be a third party that coordinated the attack. They either decided to use Talon or Null Sector and the timelines split there.”

“Someone with the resources to find either of these terrorist organisations and a grudge, but not enough means to hurt one of us outright.” She tapped her tattoo while thinking. “At some point they settled on working with Talon or Null Sector. That choice split the timeline.”

“Sounds plausible.” Jack said even though it was anything but. Time travel and parallel universes were a bit too much. Overwatch had already contracted other seemingly impossible forces to aid them.

Ana saw right through him. Her face softened with something close to pity. “Let’s keep moving.” she said and spared him having to pretend this was normal.

+++

Everything in this place was wrong. Jack surveyed the scenery with one hand poised on his eyepiece. Something red hung in the sky of this world, shining down cold light without mercy. There was no shelter for him in any direction. Some strange sorts of salt crystals were sprouting here and there. They were trampled under his combat boots and retaliated with despairing glass crunch noises.

The thing was hanging in the air as it flaunted Jesse’s body in a mockery of human demeanour. Ominous energy is gathering around him because of course this AI has to be worse. As if Jesse was already gone from this world and the damn AI didn’t even give him a chance to come back.

Jesse… didn’t deserve this. This was Gabe’s kid and Jack couldn’t just stand by and let him get taken.

“Commander.” Reaper greeted him, a mix of Jesse’s voice and that of other Blackwatch agents filtered through their comms. Fuck, Reaper had to have been stealing voices and tiny bits of lives for years now.

“You still go by Reaper I presume?” Jack shifted back towards the portal, trying to make it look like he was simply redistributing his weight.

“Haven’t you learned anything? You are an open book to me.” Smoke rose from Reaper, curling around Jesse’s limb but didn’t move to attack Jack. “By now, Commander, you should know what will happen. After all, this is not your first time riding this particular rodeo, isn’t it?”

Jack gritted his teeth and didn’t give the AI the satisfaction of a response.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warning for elaboration on the warnings applies! Please scroll past if you don't want to know!  
> The Major Character Death warning is a warning for Gabriel Reyes being dead at the beginning of this fic. He does not stay that way, dear reader.  
> Spoiler warning over.


End file.
